


Between Panes of Glass

by FullMetamorphosis



Series: The Galaxy Shattering Around Us [3]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Not Canon Compliant, Purple Prose, seductive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 07:58:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13783176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullMetamorphosis/pseuds/FullMetamorphosis
Summary: Certainly we weren’t friendly - no, me? Friendly with a member of the Council? No, only Vowrawn had been my ally once, and only with a common cause. To think I would intrude on a council woman, much less one with such a fragile grasp on her own reality, is astonishing. My own rational was questioned, but hers? Half of Kaas City wondered how she kept her own seat.If I was alien, she was eldritch.(AKA, how a Sith Warrior becomes the Empire's Wrath.)





	Between Panes of Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to: I got bored, and pulled words out of my ass, and this happened! AKA: this is how a relationship is established between two important characters.
> 
> Just- read it and if you're confused, assume that I'll explain the rest of it later on, K?

Behind my back, they whisper about the monster I’ve become.

_Lord Aerial, Last of her Clan_ , they hiss to one another,  _Corruptor of Jedi and Slayer of her Master_. They whisper these things like they’re secrets. They’re not. My title is of no mystery, and my heritage beneath Manda’lore is clear. Those I had turned to the dark side spoke openly, else cursed me from their graves. And charred into ash, the body of Darth Baras floats on the wind, suffocated on toxic gas smothered through Quesh air.

These whispers, so obvious to all, don’t so much as phase me anymore. I hear them on any Imperial planet, from Dromund Kaas to Korriban. I move between both often, openly, unaffected. My chin stays lifted, and my gait never falters. Yet, the rumors spiral.

_Stay away from that Lord. She’s eaten the very souls of her enemies, and the soul of her own lover_.

Yes - so fitting it would be, for them to know of my abilities, to know how I tread the Force in such a manner, for my eyes are ghoulish, and my corruption razes my skin like porcelain chipped and cracked from brutal beating of dollish skin against brick wall. My red eyes and red lips hold no secrets; the splatters of blood constant over the my skin, the intricate tattoos of the ancient Sith, they adorn me openly, and they make clear my every intent. Even on the wrist, spiraling up, I keep constant tally.

Three lieutenants. Two majors, two colonels, a general. Scores and scores of corporals, a swath of ensigns. And too many privates worth measuring in individual tally marks on my skin.

Only the  _significant_  worms get the pleasure of keeping bunk within my mind.

_Your madness shows with every breath you take-_

_Murderer! Killer! Tyrant, thief, madwoman!_

_You think your family didn’t deserve their deaths? So clearly they did for breeding such a monster as yourself-_

_My lord, ignore them. They have no knowledge of your past, and no knowledge of your … standing. You are better off casting them to the winds of Hoth, my lord. That, or allow me the pleasure of silencing them for you_.

It was like being pressed on all sides by panes of glass, and wondering which would shatter first. Would the glass buckle against my body and fracture? Or would my flimsy ceramic body bend first? So many nights I spent clutching at my head in null attempts to silence the noises within. So many nights I spent fighting for control over my own vessel, and rooting out the poison so many souls had wrought into my blood. It makes me, a Sith Lord, pale and delicate-looking, with bloody red eyes clasped in irises and whites. Though not a Chiss and hardly human any longer, I look unreal and alien.

And yet, nobody knows what power I truly hold. What I  _truly_  deserve.

I’d lost consciousness, and I’m in front of an office in the Korriban Academy.

The circumstance was no longer bizarre. With such fights I held daily beneath my own flesh, the act of falling within myself was as simple as breathing, but to find myself completely apart from my surroundings was stranger still. Last I had remembered, I was on Balmorra. When had I retreated? How had I arrived to this office in Korriban? The door is closed before me, but I feel I must have knocked. My awareness is uneasy, and I can’t help but find confusion in my head, a sort of isolation from myself and my own perception.

When the door opens, my eyes go wide, taking in the woman before me.

_Darth Arsono_.

Certainly we weren’t friendly - no, me? Friendly with a member of the Council? No, only Vowrawn had been my ally once, and only with a common cause. To think I would intrude on a council woman, much less one with such a fragile grasp on her  _own_  reality, is astonishing. My own rational was questioned, but hers? Half of Kaas City wondered how she kept her own seat.

If I was alien, she was  _eldritch_.

She looks down at me with red, glinting eyes - not just on her face, but along her cheeks, her forehead, down her neck, along bare shoulders and bare arms. Her pale fingers linger and press along the dark doorframe, long and slender and reeking of sexuality. My eyes are caught as she presses refined fingertips along the soft edge of the wooden frame.

“Lord Aerial. Slayer of a traitor.”

My sight slides back to her face. She pouts ever so slightly, haughty as ever. I hardly realize when her free hand slides beneath my chin. She lifts my face, and her gaze drags over my features. I allow my eyes to slide closed. For this brief moment, for as long as I still feel, there is a form of silence and warmth. The Force tremors in my bones.

A fine line of her thumbnail presses a sharp sensation of pain into my chin. My eyes flutter open, and Darth Arsono is tilting her head to one side to question my gaze. Her hand pulls back, and so too does her figure, further into her office.

“Lord Channery. Sit.”

Without her touch and look, I am left at a loss once again. For what purpose am I here, in her rooms? What would have pulled me from my work in Balmorra to the dark corridors of my old academy? Still, my bare feet graze the floor as I step into the room. I can hear the door shutting behind me as I approach Darth Arsono once more, looking up at her with nothing but devout fixation in my cursed eyes.

“Sit. I will not ask you again.”

She gestures to a stool nearby a large desk -  _her_  desk, I am to assume. I do not take it. Instead, I pass it, and turn my back to the edge of the table, pushing myself up onto its surface. I keep my stare level with hers. Something flits through Darth Arsono’s many eyes. She seems  _amused_.

“Oh. You must have  _curious reason_ , to seek my rooms and act this way.”

“The Force has drawn my here,” I drawl as I lean back on my hands. “Otherwise I would have no desire to seek you out, my lord.”

“Oh, I knew the Force was strong with you. Strong in strange, unimaginable ways; seeing you slay that snake told me so,” she explains. Her lips are so full, so expressive as she pushes her words out with a pout. “There must be reason why the Force has brought you here, and brought you now. To what ends, however? To meet my own goals? Or to meet yours?”

“My goals are no secrets,” I say. “Even a Republic child must know, I seek the killers of my clan. I’ve wiped out more of my enemies than the Republic could wipe out of our armies. I am a poisoned tip to their clubs, precise and focused.”

“And you act without hesitation. That much is clear.”

“Darth Arsono, you are a madwoman,” I spit out. “What is it you know of me that you haven’t already heard?”

“Much more than you think,” she replies with hands to her skirts, smoothing back and taming the rapturous breadths of chiffon and silks that seem intent on swallowing her up from the hips down. Her feet make a strange click against the floor as she approaches, the sound of heels. She stands over me, and I glare right back.

“You operate with purpose.”

“I always have, my lord.”

“And yet your purpose is becoming slim. I can sense it, see it. Vengeance must grow old as your list grows short.”

I narrow my glare further. “You underestimate the entertainment revenge brings.”

“You assume I’ve earned nothing from decades of age.”

“Decades though you say, though you also claim a queendom, and beauty too young.”

Darth Arsono smiles, nearly smirks. “More than you could ever know.”

“If you have intent, my lord, spit it out.”

She turns and steps away. “Have you heard of a Zakuulan Empire, Lord Aerial?”

I cross my arms and huff. Now she really  _is_  talking nonsense - until an unbidden memory rises to my mind. “There was a war with them many decades before I was born,” I say with a frown. “The war ended, and the planet joined into Imperial fold. But I haven’t heard much of it since.”

“And you’ve heard of the Emperor, no? How long he’s reigned?”

“Longer than you’ve held your seat.”

A laugh. A soft, lilting laugh, and a gaze thrown over her bare shoulder that makes a crawling sensation curl into my spine. Though my cheeks blossom into reds, I frown further and lower my chin, keeping my gaze even with hers. I will not be intimidated.

“Lord Aerial - no -  _Channery_. You shall be one of the first to learn this secret, one kept safely within the folds of the Dark Council. The Lord of this Empire, the eternal Vitiate - he is long dead. Dead and forgotten, and kept in standing only by memory. He was slain not once but twice - a body of Imperial power, and then an Eternal Emperor of Zakuul. He no longer lives.”

_The Emperor is dead?_  “For how long?”

“Many years. Since the end of the conflict with Zakuul, longer than you’ve lived, dear Corruptor. Nobody knows outside of the Council, and nobody moreso than Marr or I. You see, we live old, the two of us, though he has seen death before. And yet I,” she chuckles, and turns to me fully, and I start, because her eyes seem to be nearly on fire and churning into mirrors with the strength of it.

“I, Channery Aerial, I stand here as your  _true_  Empress.”

The room seems to go cold the instant she says it. Either that, or it’s a memory, or a warning in the Force. Either way, I cannot move myself from my seat, much less to ease this tension from my body. Looking at her, this- this monstrosity, this beautiful nightmare of a Dark Lady, I want to laugh. Laugh, and laugh, and blame this on her delusions others see in her blank eyes and her comatose states that seem to haunt her outside her position as a leader. But no; those eyes all hold the same fire, the same spark of sanity yet oblivion, and I can see clearly, this is no manufacture of her mind. Her eyes tell me, and the Force tells me, pressing reassurance and righteousness into the soft lobes of my mind. The only movement I can make is the tough swallow of a sudden truth, and though my mind’s inhabitants have been suspiciously silent this whole time, it feels like my brain is compressed with noise.

“You … really are, aren’t you?”

And it seems impossible, surely - but her smirk simply sharpens, and she nods her head as she turns to face me again. Seeing her facing me fully, a shock of ice grinds against my bones. I suddenly snap forward, and my toes are touching the floor, and then my knees.

I lower my gaze, and my head.

“ _Empress_.”

A hand to the top of my head keeps my face down, and an unearthly chuckle comes from above me.

“ _Yes_ , then. You know your place, Lord Channery. You understand your place at my feet. And surely you understand more, what with your senses. You were never a stupid one,  _oh_ , I’ve known that. I’ve seen you in dreams, Lord Channery. Like my own master, I have seen visions of the future through the lens of nocturnal sight, and I see your place at my throneside. Surely you can reason the same.”

_The Force has drawn me here_ , I think to myself.  _The Force has drawn me to her feet, to my knees. No Darth would expose this truth to me; no circumstance of whimsy would lead me to this point. And no mere Lord would hear of these truths._

_She has found me … special_.

Her hand pulls from my head, and to my chin again. I look up. She is kneeling before me now, smiling with a glint in her many eyes. Darth Arsono- no, the Empress leans in close, and I stiffen, my lips feeling a pulse through their soft skin, and she presses her cheek to mine as she whispers to my ear.

“You are … indeed, indeed a monster made of glass, Channery. And you know you can’t refuse.”

Her cold hand takes mine in its grasp, ensnaring me.

“Pinned between mirrors, I free you, and mold you into my image, my rage.  _My Wrath_.”


End file.
